Chapter 31: Savior

Sora was quite surprised to awake in a comfortable bed, for a few different reasons. For starters, he couldn't really remember falling unconscious in the first place. That, and he knew where he had been before this, and the chances of someone finding him, and then bother dragging him to a place with a comfortable bed…

Well, they were slim.

And, judging by his surroundings, he wasn't anywhere near the castle of Hollow Bastion any longer.

So, someone had to have found him.

But who?

He quickly found out when he sat up, and someone came rushing over. Said someone was a woman (she looked about ten years older than him) who wore a pink dress and had her braided hair tied up in a pink ribbon.

"Hey, good morning! Well… it's dinnertime, actually, but," she smiled kindly at him. "How are you feeling?"

"Uh… Good," Sora answered. He felt fine, really. "Uh… where am I?"

"Oh!" the woman laughed. "This is my house. Leon and I found you up at the Castle, and we couldn't just leave you there." And then, as if judging some of Sora's confusion, she added: "There's a town around the Castle, by the way. In case you didn't know."

"I… didn't," Sora admitted, sheepishly.

He'd certainly never seen or heard of a town during his stay here, with Maleficent. Though, his time at Hollow Bastion was rather… well…

He wasn't quite paying attention to things like this.

"I'm Aerith, by the way."

"I'm Sora."

"Oh!" Aerith's face lit up quite dramatically. "Sora! It's nice to meet you."

Sora blinked, taken aback. "Uh… You know me?"

"Well, no, but I know Riku. He talked about you a lot, back in Traverse Town."

"O- Oh…" Sora deflated a bit. He can't imagine any of the things Riku'd said about him being, uh, nice things…

"Namine talked about you too," Aerith added, with a patient smile. "They were both really fond of you."

At this, Sora relaxed a bit. Maybe Riku had been nice about him. And Namine definitely would have been.

Something else occurred to him, then.

"Uhh… How long have I been out?" Sora asked.

"All day," Aerith replied. She looked him up and down. "You were pretty badly beaten up when I found you… Looked like a bad fight."

"Uh, yeah," Sora laughed nervously, scratching at the back of his neck. "Lots of Heartless," he said, not wanting to explain the whole deal with his Shadow. He didn't even understand it himself!

Aerith studied him a second, like she didn't buy the Heartless excuse. But then she shrugged. "Yeah, they are pretty nasty up around there," she agreed. "I got you healed up alright, so you don't need to worry about that. But if you want to rest some more, I can bring dinner up to you, if you'd like…"

Sora thought about it a moment, and then shrugged. He felt fine now.

"Nah, I'm good," he told her, sliding out of bed.

Aerith broke into a grin. "Good to hear! Then you can come meet everyone, come on!" she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the room and towards the stairs, which were basically right in front of the door to his room. Of course, there was a couple-paces worth the width of a hallway in between, but still…

He didn't get much of a look at the rest of upstairs, but once they were downstairs, Sora came to a surprised standstill. The first thing he noticed was that Aerith's house was big. Much bigger than any of the houses on Destiny Islands, which used their second floor to avoid taking up horizontal space.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Sora was staring straight into the kitchen, which was separated from him with a partial wall that was more window than it was anything else. It was just the counter and then nothing above it except about a foot of wall hanging down from the ceiling, presumably for cabinets or something on the other side. There was a man in the kitchen, busy cooking.

To Sora's left was a living room. Two couches with low backs were seated on either side of a coffee table. A tall bookshelf sat behind the far couch, and to its left was a smaller, wider bookshelf—the smaller one had a couple photo frames sitting on top of it.

To Sora's right was the dining room. There was nothing in there except a very large table (looked like it could comfortably sit eight, and ten wouldn't have been much of a squeeze) which… took up so much space it probably wasn't a surprise there was nothing else in the room. There were three people already sitting around the table.

"Hey, look who's finally up!" laughed the man in the kitchen, looking up from whatever he was throwing together.

Sora waved, mainly at the man, but also at everyone else, since they were all looking at them now.

"Here, let me introduce you," Aerith said. "Cid's the one cooking."

"You're in luck, kid, I'm making soup tonight!" Cid called, grinning widely.

"Over there is Yuffie." Aerith pointed to a girl about Sora's age with black hair that came to her shoulders. She was sitting on the close side of the table, balanced on the back two legs of her chair. She grinned and waved at Sora, and amazingly, did not lose her balance. (Sora did every time he stopped concentrating on balancing in his chair like that.)

"That's Leon." Aerith pointed to a man with brown hair and a scar across his face who wore primarily black. He was sitting directly across from Yuffie, enjoying a cup of tea. He also waved at Sora, offering a polite "nice to meet you" while he was at it.

"And that's Cloud!" Aerith pointed last at a man with spiky blonde hair who sat next to Leon. He was also wearing primarily black, and looked a bit tense. He only glanced up at the mention of his name, but his gaze was intense. Sora couldn't help but notice Cloud's bright blue eyes.

"He doesn't stay with us often," Aerith continued. "It's really nice when he does though!"

"So, kid, what's your name?" Cid asked, looking up from his soup.

"Uh, Sora."

Now Yuffie dropped her chair to the ground, though it looked intentional. "You!" she exclaimed, eyes narrowed threateningly. "You're that guy who Riku was having trouble with!"

"Yuffie," Aerith said, sternly.

"It's true!"

"But wasn't it also the darkness, technically?" Leon argued.

"It was," Sora mumbled, rubbing at his arm. He looked to Yuffe, trying to meet her eyes, because it seemed like she was the one most upset. "I'm sorry," he said. "I really… really wish I hadn't."

"Well-" Yuffie began, looking like she still wanted to argue.

"Leave him be," Cloud sighed. "He apologized, didn't he? And I'm sure he doesn't want to be reminded of all the ways he messed up in the past if he can avoid it."

Yuffie let out a long huff of a sigh.

"Fine," she said. "But only because you asked, Cloud."

"Thanks," Sora muttered, not sure if he actually felt reassured by this turn of events.

"Soup's ready!" Cid shouted.

Yuffie hastily sat up straight. Aerith nodded at Sora to go ahead and sit down, and then went and got bowls for everyone. Sora eyed Yuffie, and finally resolved to sit on the same side of the table as her, just… on the other end. Cid came over and set the large pot of soup in the middle of the table and then proceeded to fill the bowls Aerith handed him and passed them around the table.

From the looks of things, they did this often.

"Thank you," Sora said, when his bowl was passed to him.

"You're welcome!" Aerith laughed, getting her own bowl and sitting down next to him.

Cid's soup turned out to be extremely good, and Sora found himself asking for seconds in only a short amount of time. Cid snapped at him to wait (and was scolded by Aerith for it) because at the time he was dealing with Yuffie, who was already on her third bowl. Leon asked for seconds soon after this. For some reason, Cloud never had to ask for a refill, because Aerith was already refilling his bowl before he could ask.

Sora learned a lot over the course of dinner.

For starters, they all used to live in Hollow Bastion (though, he never learned if Cloud used to live here or not), and were now trying to restore it to its former glory. The Heartless were, however, causing problems. Sora offered to help, at least with the Heartless problem. It wouldn't be any different than what he and Riku had been doing. And, if he was going to be randomly killing Heartless, he might as well be killing them for good reason.

When he asked if staying here would be a problem, Aerith quickly told him that it would be no problem at all. They were used to random people crashing with them, whether it be people they knew (such as Cloud, or another girl named Tifa that also came to stay often apparently,) or people that they absolutely had no relation to. Sora found out that Riku had even stayed with them for a while, back when they were in Traverse Town. Well, it was more of just Namine, because Riku apparently didn't stay for very long.

However, on the subject of Riku and Namine, Sora started talking more. He again apologized for all the trouble he had caused, though he was told not to worry about it. Someone asked how Riku was doing now, and Sora went ahead to explain that.

Cid kept cracking jokes throughout the entire meal, and almost everyone was laughing by now. Leon was at least smiling, and Cloud was just frowning. Though, the last few jokes had been about him, so he had reason not to laugh.

I can't believe I'm having such a good time… Sora thought with a smile. And Hollow Bastion was the exact place I NEVER wanted to go, too.

That's irony for you, I guess…

"So why did you leave Castle Oblivion?" Leon asked suddenly, turning to Sora.

Sora's laughter came to an abrupt stop when faced with that question. He wasn't sure how to answer, exactly.

His main reason was to find out who that Shadow was. He had kind of figured that out—since his Shadow had just dropped the information in his lap, basically—but he still had a few questions about the mess. And... even if he knew what his Shadow was, he still had to do something about his Shadow, right? He decided not to mention his Shadow, though. Why bother, when he was the only one who could see him?

His only other reason was that he was tired of hurting people without meaning to. He didn't really want to mention that though, either.

"I had to do some things alone," he muttered lamely after a moment. It was as good of a reason as any, and it wasn't a lie or anything.

"Sounds like someone else I know," Yuffie said, casting a meaningful glance at Cloud.

Cloud returned this with a glare.

"Be nice to Cloud!" Aerith scolded.

Yuffie rolled her eyes.

"Well, I don't know about you kids," Cid said, rising to his feet. "But I'm tired. I'm going to bed!"

"Goodnight Cid!" Aerith called as he headed up the stairs to where all the rooms were. She turned back to the rest of the group. "Is anyone else tired?"

"I'm not tired!" Yuffie proclaimed firmly.

"I might go to bed…" Leon muttered, standing up and also going up the stairs.

"What about you, Sora?" Aerith asked.

Sora shrugged. He might have only been awake for a few hours, but he was feeling rather tired. Maybe that battle had taken more of a toll on him than he'd thought… "I guess I'll go to bed too," he said, slowly rising to his feet.

"Cloud, you should get some rest, too," Aerith said.

"I know," he replied.

Sora was about halfway up the stairs by this point, and Cloud walked past him.

"Thank you, by the way," Sora called. Cloud paused, and glanced over his shoulder. "For earlier," Sora added, shrugging.

Cloud nodded. "It was nothing," he said simply, before continuing to walk.

Sora wondered if he should say anymore, but decided against it. Behind him, he could hear Aerith scolding Yuffie about not getting enough sleep, and he laughed slightly.

Aerith's like everyone's mother, he thought, as he finally found his room. She's always looking out for everyone. Especially Cloud.

I wonder who he is, exactly…

Well… I'm sure if I stay here long enough, I'll find out eventually.

He flopped gratefully into his bed, and fell asleep moments after lying down.